- Quicken Loans Inc. argues that its suit against the federal government is valid because it is more than just a fraud case. It claims that it is about broader issues with government housing programs.
- A class action suit against JPMorgan Chase Bank NA will not be dismissed over failure to file timely mortgage satisfactions even though one of the plaintiffs rejected a settlement offer for more than she could get from a court judgment.
- An administrative judge denied that the SEC had shown fraud in commercial mortgage-backed securities suit against Standard & Poor’s former executive, Barbara Duka, because the SEC failed to show that S&P had done anything wrong, let alone Duka.
- IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s suit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. remains intact for losses after a $73.2 million purchase of residential mortgage-backed securities. Goldman Sachs argued that the suit was beyond the German 3-year statute of limitations.
- Law360 compiles lists of “The Top Banking Cases In The First Half of 2015.”
Tag Archives: fraud
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Massachusetts’s federal court found that a unit of Deutsche Bank AG failed to vet some residential mortgage-backed securities, which mislead Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
- US Bank filed an amended complaint claiming that Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp. and CitiMortgage Inc. in suit over bad mortgage-backed securities.
- After PHH Corp. was ordered to pay $109 million in penalties by the CFPB in a mortgage kickback scheme, it has asked to D.C. Circuit to reconsider.
- New York state court dismisses Commerzbank AG’s suit against UBS AG, Credit Suisse Group AG, and others due to the statute of limitations. Commerzbank brought suit alleging loan quality fraud in the sale of $1.9 billion in mortgage securities.
- NY federal court dismissed a derivative shareholder suit against American Realty Capital Properties Inc. as the suit did not fulfill the state law requirement that demand be made on the board of directors before bringing suit and this case did not meet the narrow futility exception to such demand. The shareholders brought suit over accounting issues that led to a sharp drop in stock value and destroyed a possible $700 million sale.
- In suit against Amazon for breach of contract, The Durst Organization will not be able to force Amazon to sign a $20 million per year lease. The court found that the letter of intent does not compel the retailer to execute the lease. However, Durst may be able to recover under the additional breach of duty and fraud claims.
- In a historical decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fair Housing Act covers unintentional discrimination through disparate impact, citing to the deep racial divides in the 1960s.
- US Bank, as a trustee of Lehman XS Trust, brings suit against Bank of America and Countrywide Financial for $178 million for alleged breach of representations and warranties in sale of residential mortgage loans.
New FHA Guidelines No Biggie
(Original Purchases in Levittown Funded in Large Part by FHA Mortgages)
Law360 quoted me in New Guidelines For Bad FHA Loans Won’t Boost Lending (behind paywall). It opens,
The federal government on Thursday provided lenders with a streamlined framework for how it determines whether the Federal Housing Administration must be paid for a loan gone bad, but experts say the new framework will have limited effect because it failed to alleviate the threat of a Justice Department lawsuit.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided lenders with what it called a “defect taxonomy” that it will use to determine when a lender will have to indemnify the FHA, which essentially provides insurance for mortgages taken out by first-time and low-income borrowers, for bad loans. The new framework whittled down the number of categories the FHA would review when making its decisions on loans and highlighted how it would measure the severity of those defects.
All of this was done in a bid to increase transparency and boost a sagging home loan sector. However, HUD was careful to state that its new default taxonomy does not have any bearing on potential civil or administrative liability a lender may face for making bad loans.
And because of that, lenders will still be skittish about issuing new mortgages, said Jeffrey Naimon, a partner with BuckleySandler LLP.
“What this expressly doesn’t address is what is likely the single most important thing in housing policy right now, which is how the Department of Justice is going to handle these issues,” he said.
The U.S. housing market has been slow to recover since the 2008 financial crisis due to a combination of economics, regulatory changes and, according to the industry, the threat of litigation over questionable loans from the Justice Department, the FHA and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
In recent years, the Justice Department has reached settlements reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars with banks and other lenders over bad loans backed by the government using the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act.
The most recent settlement came in February when MetLife Inc. agreed to a $123.5 million deal.
In April, Quicken Loans Inc. filed a preemptive suit alleging that the Justice Department and HUD were pressuring the lender to admit to faulty lending practices that they did not commit. The Justice Department sued Quicken soon after.
Policymakers at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which serves as the conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and HUD have attempted to ease lenders’ fears that they will force lenders to buy back bad loans or otherwise indemnify the programs.
HUD on Thursday said that its new single-family loan quality assessment methodology — the so-called defect taxonomy — would do just that by slimming down the categories it uses to categorize mortgage defects from 99 to nine and establishing a system for categorizing the severity of those defects.
Among the nine categories that will be included in HUD’s review of loans are measures of borrowers’ income, assets and credit histories as well as loan-to-value ratios and maximum mortgage amounts.
Providing greater insight into FHA’s thinking is intended to make lending easier, Edward Golding, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for housing, said in a statement.
“By enhancing our approach, lenders will have more confidence in how they interact with FHA and, we anticipate, will be more willing to lend to future homeowners who are ready to own,” he said.
However, what the new guidelines do not do is address the potential risk for lenders from the Justice Department.
“This taxonomy is not a comprehensive statement on all compliance monitoring or enforcement efforts by FHA or the federal government and does not establish standards for administrative or civil enforcement action, which are set forth in separate law. Nor does it address FHA’s response to patterns and practice of loan-level defects, or FHA’s plans to address fraud or misrepresentation in connection with any FHA-insured loan,” the FHA’s statement said.
And that could blunt the overall benefits of the new guidelines, said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.
“To the extent it helps people make better decisions, it will help them reduce their exposure. But it is not any kind of bulletproof vest,” he said.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Shareholders of Deutsche Bank petitioned for cert to the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify the standard for a claim for pleading a fraudulent claim under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 following the Second Circuit tossing their suit in July 2014.
- 10th Circuit revives National Credit Union Administration’s $550 million suit against Barclays for misrepresentation of the quality of over $555 million in RMBS.
- First wave of Hurricane Sandy cases settle with FEMA and insurers over the improper cutting of the homeowners’ payouts following the storm.
Consumer Thoughts on Credit Reports
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a report, Consumer Voices on Credit Reports and Scores. This report builds on other recent work from the CFPB about how much people really understand about consumer finance. The answer — they still have a lot to brush up on. The CFPB conducted a series of focus groups about credit reports and credit scores. The CFPB concluded that
that many consumers are interested in and concerned about credit reports and scores. We found that some of the consumers we talked to expressed confusion about the best way to access credit reports and scores, what makes up credit reports and scores, and how to improve their scores. Some of the consumers we spoke to often do not feel empowered to take action to improve their credit histories, to use their credit reports and scores to negotiate better credit terms, or, ultimately, to use credit reports and scores as a helpful tool in achieving their financial goals.
The diversity of consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors we heard around credit reports and scores suggests that there is much work to do in helping consumers understand and manage this complicated financial topic. Because consumers have a wide range of knowledge about and perceptions of credit reports and scores, there is no single message or approach to encourage consumers to engage more fully with their credit histories.
However, consumer perspectives on credit reports do suggest that many consumers feel that the credit reports are “hard to get, and hard to read.” Efforts by credit reporting agencies to make it easier for consumers to access and interpret their reports could be a useful contribution tohelping consumers navigate their credit histories.
The growing number of financial services companies that provide their customers with regular access to their credit scores on monthly credit card statements or online provides an opportunity to engage consumers around their credit reports. Once consumers see their credit scores, they may be motivated to learn more about their credit histories, check their full credit reports, and take action to improve their credit reports and scores. (19)
I am happy to see that the CFPB is trying to understand where consumers are at in terms of their financial literacy. This should help them to target their financial education efforts realistically. The report notes that the subject of credit reports is a complicated one. The mortgage application process is far, far more complicated so this report gives us a sense of how much work is to be done for consumers to achieve financial well-being.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Federal judge reprimands Wells Fargo for forged mortgage documents in connection with foreclosure in NY.
- Goldman Sachs, among others, argues to SDNY that it was wrongfully included in litigation over requiring mortgage customers to purchase force-placed insurance and taking kickbacks. Goldman, Arrow motion to dismiss. Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion.
- Court denies motion to dismiss from NY Port Authority in suit brought for unpaid taxes on 40 properties in NY and NJ.
Wednesday’s Academic Roundup
- Banking Integration and House Price Comovement, by Augustin Landier, David Alexandre Sraer & David Thesmar, CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10295.
- Second-Liens and the Leverage Option, by Adam J. Levitin & Susan M. Wachter, U of Penn. Inst. for Law & Econ Research Paper.
- Regulating Against Bubbles: How Mortgage Regulation Can Keep Main Street and Wall Street Safe – From Themselves, by Ryan Bubb & Prasad Krishnamurthy, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 163, Forthcoming NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 15-03.
- Who Wins Residential Property Tax Appeals?, by Randall K. Johnson, Columbia Journal of Tax Law, Forthcoming Mississippi College School of Law Research Paper No. 2015-01.
- The Theft of Affordable Housing: How Rent Stabilized Apartments are Disappearing from Fraudulent Individual Apartment Improvements and What Can Be Done to Save Them, by Justin R. La Mort, New York University Review of Law & Social Change, Forthcoming.
